42 dhL Delightful Way to <Wi :::.* '1 1^, . v( :: ....)-" STAB IllZED SHIPS Zuxuriotts JIppointments S.S. ALBERT BALLIN 5.S. DEUTSCHLAND S. S. HAMBURG S. S. NEW Y 0 R I( Enjoy the flower-deckedV eranda Cafe, the cheery CCOversea Grill. H Discover the true festival spirit in a Trans-Atlantic crossing on immaculate ships, with flawless service, epicurean fare. And all pleasure doubled by the stability of these swift cc Famous Four." First Class from $166 Tourist from $98.50 A sailing every Wednesday mid- night from West 46th Street.. to Cherbourg Southampton o Hamburg HAMBURG- AMERICAN LINE 39 Broadway, N. Y. Principal Cities CONSULT YOUR TRAVEL AGENT THE TENNIS C OUR. T S Rule, Britannia-Mr. Prentice and Staff - Practice Makes Imperfect PARIS, JULY 23 I T'S all a bad dream. It must be a bad dream. I'll wake up. Maybe it was that escalope de veau Lié ge- oise we had last night. Or the Château Latour 1 915. Or possibly the heat in that fireless cooker they call the Stade Roland Garros. Yes, I'll wake up. It's all a bad dream. Four mat c h e s to one, twelve sets to six. England in the Challenge Round against France. Alas, it wasn't a bad dream. Why this lick- ing ? Well, I'm tired of writ- ing it, and you-I hope-are tired of reading it: Too much tennis. Grand Palace hotels. An idiotic training. The usual thing, plus one more handicap. That handicap was Mr. Mercer Beasley. I understand there is a move- ment on foot in Paris to get the Légion d'Honneur for Mr. Beasley as the man who saved the Davis Cup for France. How old Bill Tilden must be chuckling today. But to me it's not funny to see the petty spites and jealousies of tennis officials prolonged in sport. Bill, you remember, offered to train the Ameri- can team over here for nothing. If there is anyone who knows more about the French and French tennis, anyone better fitted for the job, I cannot think who it is. But if Tilden trained the team, we would win, and much of the glory would be his. Rightly, too. So the second-rate mentalities who persecuted him during his playing career refused his offer. Instead, we had Mr. Mer- cer Beasley . Mr. Beasley cannot even address a ballboy in the language of the country, he knows nothing about French tennis or conditions abroad, and until recently had never seen a French- man in action. If ever a team de- served what they got, it was this 1933 crowd who represented the United States. T HAT brings up another reason for the debacle. The weakness of the High Command over here. The General Staff of the American Ex- peditionary Force consisted of Mr. Bernon Prentice, captain; Mr. Law- rence Baker, assistant to the captain; Mr. Francis Burke Roche, assistant to the assistant to the captain. Not to mention Mr. Jake Webber, trainer, and last of all Mr. Mercer Beasley, head coach and master mind of the strategical side. With this super-en- tourage surrounding the team, do you wonder we couldn't defeat even a mediocre English team? The English were not brilliant. They were an average but well-bal- anced tea m, ex cell e n t 1 y , equipped tactically and strate- gicall y for matches on hard courts. They didn't play ex- traordinary tennis, they played mostly routine tennis, what the French call "un jeu honor- able." They won not because they were so marvelous but because the Americans were so bad. Only Lott, who did not ruin him- self by that four-month jaunt through Australia, was anywhere near his real form. I realize that since the days of Tilden and Johnston-no, since the days of Beals Wright and Larned- Americans have been better at home than abroad, that they always are more dangerous on their own courts. But nothing excuses their lamentable dis- play, mentally and physically most in- different. It was tragic to see such magnificent material wasted On the tenth of May last, Vines predicted in a newspaper interview that we would win the Davis Cup. He also made the same statement in the Paris Intransigeant recently. Do you wonder the French think us a bunch of muggs? This unwarranted and stupid optimism pervaded the American camp up to the evening of the first match, quite in the face of facts. A haute personnalité américaine told me blandly the night before the opening day that the team was playing well: "Vines is in grand form. Allison is playing wonderful tennis." Such fatu- ousness left me speechless, because it was apparent to everyone who had watched the practice that Vines' back- hand did not exist and that Allison was not as good as he was last year. If this escaped the eyes of the aforesaid haute personnalité américaine, it didn't escape the eyes of the English captain, Mr. Roper Barrett. T o show you the Beasley system and the complete ridiculousness of the American training methods, meth- ods carried to such an extreme that they ended in the collapse of Vines at match point in his contest against Perry, one